Knowledge Bears

One of the benchmarks I have used when looking for sites for the Family First Site of the Day is the edutainment factor that it has. That means sites that are both entertaining as well as educational. It is easy for site to be fun to visit and play at, but visitors don't learn much. It is also easy for sites to be educational but be so boring a person could fall asleep while visiting them (much like reading a history or math text book). Today's site is one that has a high edutainment factor, made better with the latest Flash technology.

The name of the site is Knowledge Bear. It is a site that is dedicated to helping young cyber visitors learn about animals. It started on the Internet in 2000, and has claimed first place in Google searches for "best animal sites". The entire site was recently overhauled/upgraded to the latest Flash and XML technology. This has allowed them to increase the size of their pages, yet still have pages load in seconds on 56k dial-up connections (after all, not everyone has broadband).

The site currently has over 300 pictures with information on over 50 animals. You access the animals by choosing the first letter of the animal name, which takes you to it. For example, with C for Camels, you have pictures of them along with interesting facts that describe them, such as "As long as a camel has food, it can live several months without water".

There are games that can be played here as well. In "Turtle's Revenge", you have to help Tom Turtle fight off sharks. They are easy to play, and quite fun for all ages. In addition to games, there is an online coloring book, where you can color animals on the computer and print them out, or print them out and color them with your own crayons. Visitors can also go to Sound Island or Sound Farm and hear the actual noises that the featured animals make.

One nice feature is the Network tab on the main page. Here you are taken to links for other Knowledge Bears sites, such as Ask-a-Bear, A2zKB (an online book with lots of information, games and things to do), and Eraoke (an online karaoke site). In the Ask-a-Bear section, you can ask questions of the bears on a wide range of subjects, such as history, science, and sports.

This is a wonderful entertaining and educational site. It helps children of all ages learn about animals, and have so much fun in the process that they don't even know they are learning. That is the mark of a great edutainment site, and the Knowledge Bears has that mark.

http://www.borrico.com/

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